NCP stages protest outside ED office for a case registered against Sharad Pawar

Mumbai, Sep 25: The Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) staged a protest outside Enforcement Directorate (ED) office, in Mumbai earlier on Wednesday. NCP showed strong protest against ED for registering a case against its founder-president Sharad Pawar and his nephew Ajit Pawar in the Rs 25,000 crore Maharashtra State Cooperative Bank scam.

ED has booked NCP chief Sharad Pawar, his nephew, and former deputy chief minister Ajit Pawar and others in a criminal case of money laundering linked to the alleged Rs 25000-crore scam in Maharashtra State Cooperative Bank (MSCB).

The youth wing of the NCP protested outside the ED office in Mumbai.

Enforcement Case Information Report (ECIR), an equivalent of a police FIR, has been registered by the central agency under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA) against all the accused.

The case is based on a Mumbai Police FIR that had named the then directors of the bank, former deputy chief minister of the state Ajit Pawar and 70 former functionaries of the cooperative bank.

Sharad Pawar, chief of the Nationalist Congress Party and a former CM of Maharashtra, has been named in the ED FIR based on the police FIR. This is for the first time Pawar has been named in a criminal case.

The registration of the case comes ahead of the October 21 Assembly polls in Maharashtra.

The Maharashtra unit of the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), however, justified the Enforcement Directorate (ED) action, saying it took the steps as per rules and procedure.

In a sarcastic comment, Sharad Pawar also "thanked" the central agency for naming him in the case relating to the bank of which he "is not a member and was not involved in its decision-making" in any way.

The NCP chief said that he would have been "surprised" had there not been such an action against him given the "huge" response he received during his poll campaign in Maharashtra.

The former Union minister, however, said that he will continue with his campaigning for the October 21 assembly polls in Maharashtra.